I have also been on a project just like this and it was hell. With the hype in AI, in our division an "AI Labs" (AIL) was formed, separate from the R&D org which was already there . People from the AIL came up with POCs, filed patent applications, declared success, got promotions, bonuses and carried on. The task of productionizing these "successes" fell onto us. None of them could be productionized. Most of the projects were silently buried. At least the AIL folks got what they wanted. People from our R&D team were fed up and moved out to other divisions.
True! The AI Labs people would come up with these prototype ideas, file patents, declare everything a success and get promotions and bonuses. But then it was up to us in R&D to actually get those "successes" ready for real use by customers. None of it could be done though. Most of the projects just got quietly scrapped in the end. At least the AI Labs folks got what they wanted out of it I guess. Everyone on our R&D team got so fed up they started moving to other departments to get away from it all. Here's the link: https://chi-nese.com/list-of-positive-words-that-start-with-r/
I wish I could say that I'm surprised about how messed up the "R&D" process was at $BIG_COMPANY but I can't.
On the other hand, I can say that I'm very happy to be working at my own startup where I can decide what to work on and when, and as a result we have half a dozen patent applications in process.
I have also been on a project just like this and it was hell. With the hype in AI, in our division an "AI Labs" (AIL) was formed, separate from the R&D org which was already there . People from the AIL came up with POCs, filed patent applications, declared success, got promotions, bonuses and carried on. The task of productionizing these "successes" fell onto us. None of them could be productionized. Most of the projects were silently buried. At least the AIL folks got what they wanted. People from our R&D team were fed up and moved out to other divisions.
True! The AI Labs people would come up with these prototype ideas, file patents, declare everything a success and get promotions and bonuses. But then it was up to us in R&D to actually get those "successes" ready for real use by customers. None of it could be done though. Most of the projects just got quietly scrapped in the end. At least the AI Labs folks got what they wanted out of it I guess. Everyone on our R&D team got so fed up they started moving to other departments to get away from it all. Here's the link: https://chi-nese.com/list-of-positive-words-that-start-with-r/
I wish I could say that I'm surprised about how messed up the "R&D" process was at $BIG_COMPANY but I can't.
On the other hand, I can say that I'm very happy to be working at my own startup where I can decide what to work on and when, and as a result we have half a dozen patent applications in process.
And although of course you never know how the patent process will proceed, it looks as though we have a pretty good likelihood of getting a major, basic patent grant for a novel hash table sometime in the relatively near future. If you want to read the application, it's here: https://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PG01&s1=heller&s2=hash&OS=heller+AND+hash&RS=heller+AND+hash